02673cam a22002777 4500001000700000003000500007005001700012008004100029100001900070245015500089260006600244490004200310500001600352520142500368530006101793538007201854538003601926690008201962690011002044700002402154700002302178710004202201830007702243856003802320856003702358w18986NBER20161209100948.0161209s2013 mau||||fs|||| 000 0 eng d1 aKendall, Chad.10aHow Do Voters Respond to Information? Evidence from a Randomized Campaignh[electronic resource] /cChad Kendall, Tommaso Nannicini, Francesco Trebbi. aCambridge, Mass.bNational Bureau of Economic Researchc2013.1 aNBER working paper seriesvno. w18986 aApril 2013.3 aRational voters update their subjective beliefs about candidates' attributes with the arrival of information, and subsequently base their votes on these beliefs. Information accrual is, however, endogenous to voters' types and difficult to identify in observational studies. In a large scale randomized trial conducted during an actual mayoral campaign in Italy, we expose different areas of the polity to controlled informational treatments about the valence and ideology of the incumbent through verifiable informative messages sent by the incumbent reelection campaign. Our treatments affect both actual vote shares at the precinct level and vote declarations at the individual level. We explicitly investigate the process of belief updating by comparing the elicited priors and posteriors of voters, finding heterogeneous responses to information. Based on the elicited beliefs, we are able to structurally assess the relative weights voters place upon a candidate's valence and ideology. We find that both valence and ideological messages affect the first and second moments of the belief distribution, but only campaigning on valence brings more votes to the incumbent. With respect to ideology, cross-learning occurs, as voters who receive information about the incumbent also update their beliefs about the opponent. Finally, we illustrate how to perform counterfactual campaigns based upon the structural model. aHardcopy version available to institutional subscribers. aSystem requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. aMode of access: World Wide Web. 7aH1 - Structure and Scope of Government2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aH7 - State and Local Government • Intergovernmental Relations2Journal of Economic Literature class.1 aNannicini, Tommaso.1 aTrebbi, Francesco.2 aNational Bureau of Economic Research. 0aWorking Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)vno. w18986.4 uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w1898641uhttp://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w18986